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345

The Suspension of Suspension

S E T T L I N G F O R T H E I M P R O B A B L E

Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos

Abstract. Using Amélie Nothomb’s Stupeur et Tremblements , a novel that appeared in and shook the waters of the francophone literary world, this article analyzes the relation between love

and law in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. In order to “ful fi ll” love, which is de fi ned here more

in the form of caritas and justice than erotic love, one has to suspend the legal, since the relation is one

of mutually exclusive circularity. For this, the author engages in a critique of Derrida’s “Force of

Law,” pointing to the omission of the circular and the internal from Derrida’s analysis of the relation

between justice and law. To address this, inspiration is drawn from Luhmann’s ideas on love and law

and the notion of suspension of suspension is introduced, which is de fi ned as the perpetual possibility

of internalized ignorance of the external other, whether the dyad refers to ethics and faith, law and

love, or self and amorous subject.

“Love is the ful

fi lment of the law”

—Paul [Rom. :

]

In this article I write about love. But to clarify things from the start, I do not

believe in love. Or more precisely, I believe in the improbability of love. But

this is just my being obstreperous. Because, really, here I will be describing howone can never ful

fill one’s goals and be relatively content. Such description has

the specific aim of providing a “code”: a calculation of sorts that makes the

impossible (“I will never fall in love”) appear simply improbable (“Will I ever

fall in love?”). And since improbability always contains a spec of spes, it is pref-

erable to impossibility. So the purpose of this article is to describe the code that,

when applied, makes improbable what seems outright impossible.

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346

Law & Li terature •

Volume 15, Number 3

My springboard is a novel by Amélie Nothomb entitled Stupeur et Tremble-

ments about a Belgian working in a Japanese corporation who rebels against

Japanese company regulations to gain the love of a colleague. In order to ana-lyze the novel, I employ Kierkegaard’s awe-inspiring suspension of the ethical

as described in the (homonymous) Fear and Trembling. While one has to

exhibit caution when approaching title similarities with a view to analysis,

especially in view of their potentially coincidental or simply sensationalist

nature, there is little doubt that Nothomb’s choice of title was a conscious

attempt to link the two dilemmas described in these otherwise very diff erent

books. On that basis, two pairs of concepts are hesitantly formed: on the

novel’s side, the normative and the amorous; and on Kierkegaard’s side, theethical and the religious. I have no desire to draw parallels between the pairs

for the purposes of this article. Instead, what I retain is the “procedural” oper-

ation of suspension within these pairs as the essential tool for a certain discon-

tinuity between seemingly compatible but ultimately diff erent concepts. This

“decontextualized” operation of suspension will be the focus of the analysis.

Suspension will undergo considerable reworking, detaching it from its specific

Kierkegaardian context and re-semiologizing it as a self-standing operation.

As such, suspension contributes to the codification of the “calculation” employed

when disparate concepts or entities (ethical/religious, legal/amorous, Belgian/

Japanese) attempt to come together. Suspension is an interrupting operation

that codifies the discontinuity between two concepts. However, interruption is

only one half of the improbability code.

The other half comes from within the criticism of another instance of sus-

pension: the one performed by Derrida in the pair law/justice. Derrida,

indeed, suggests the suspension of the legal for the fulfi

llment of justice. How-ever, since my aim is to codify the improbability of such coupling in a decon-

textualized manner, I do not dwell on the obvious link between the Derridean

couple and the previous ones but press on and point to two additional ele-

ments of the process: circularity and internalization. The introduction of these

two elements throws into relief the interchangeability of the two values in the

manner of circular discontinuity, which, additionally, lies not beyond but

within each value. This is the moment when the other half of the improbability

code is materialized: a second suspension that suspends the suspension. Thus,for now, suspension of suspension can be defined as the perpetual postponement

of fulfillment of the goal, which only comes to the fore once the goal has been

“fulfilled.” The postponement is internalized in the contingency of each








347

Phi l ippopoulos-Miha lopoulos •


value. The realization of such claustrophobic hope is the ultimate moment of

fear and trembling: when the inescapability of one’s fragile positioning in the

cycle makes one content to settle for the improbable. Thus, suspension of sus-pension is shown to be the code of improbable but not impossible connections

between such difficult couples as Japanese normativity and love for a col-

league, law and justice, self and other, knowledge and ignorance.

The analysis is reverently but playfully inspired by Luhmann’s ideas on

French love literature specifically and the operation of selection between the

two values of a binary more generally. Thus, the analysis starts by employ-

ing some of the concepts Luhmann introduces in his analysis of similarly-

themed literature, and then it seemingly abandons such ideas for the complex-ities of suspension as witnessed in Kierkegaard and Derrida. It is, however,

obvious that Luhmann’s mode of thinking runs through the whole article, and

not least in the paradoxical but ultimately codifying concept of the suspension

of suspension.

O N C E U P O N E V E R Y T I M E . . .

Amélie Nothomb is a much-discussed name on the contemporary franco-

phone literary stage. Nothomb is Belgian but was born in Kobé, Japan, in .

She describes herself as a graphomane, and there is no reason to doubt this as

she has been consistently producing one book a year for the last years.1 Her

proliferation is not uncontroversial: to start with, the titles of her books are

“di

fficult,” often verging on the absurd while insinuating the philosophical

basis of her literary work.2 Second, the majority of her books adopt a semi-

autobiographical style that confounds the limits between her real life and her

literary “lies.” These books generally refer to the time she spent in Japan dur-

ing her father’s work as a diplomat and range from the extremely perceptive to

the comparative, the totally self-indulgent, and eventually the off ensive. Such

extremes are usually accommodated within a deceptively simple, ironic, and

often exaggerated style that hides referential complications and implies various

levels of apprehension. Third, Nothomb has reserved for the media a very

eccentric picture of herself, both deeply intellectual and sincerely incompre-hensible, which exacerbates rather than alleviates contradictions between

her literary persona (a lesbian masochist with self-delusions of grandeur) and

her quotidian self (known to be heterosexual and rather down to earth).








348


Volume 15, Number 3

Her book Stupeur et Tremblements, which won the Grand Prix du Roman

de l’Académie in and has been made into a film with the same name,3 is

typical in many respects. It assumes a semi-autobiographical style that refersto the time when she decided to pursue her dream to work for a Japanese cor-

poration in Tokyo. Amélie (the heroine/the author) is a foreigner (Belgian)

who begins working for the Yomimoto company (a Japanese firm), which, as

we are told, is “one of the biggest companies of the universe” and deals with

everything from Finnish Emmenthal to Canadian optical fibers.4 We are not told

what the nature of her employment is, but we assume that she is some sort of

office administrator. She quickly meets her immediate boss, Fubuki Mori, a Jap-

anese woman of impressive beauty and stature, and she finds out that she is toshare an office with her. Amélie will be Fubuki’s assistant.

From this point onward, Amélie’s long trajectory starts into a classic retelling

of amore amaro— bitter, unreciprocated love. While she melts over Fubuki,

the latter becomes icier and more distant with every indication of Amélie’s

love. At the same time, the harder Amélie tries to ingratiate herself with

Fubuki, the deeper she delves into an abyss of gaff es and blunders manifesting

themselves in an almost impossibleflouting of corporate regulations and prin-

ciples. In fact, it would seem that Amélie’s idea of expressing her feelings to

Fubuki is an almost opéra comique catenation of defiant, inappropriate, and

ultimately unacceptable behavioral instances. At the same time, her lack of

compliance with and adaptation to the rigid normativity of the Japanese cor-

poration rises concurrently with her obsession for Fubuki.

The novel can be read on several levels. The first and most obvious level is

that of the grotesque story of a foreigner in Japan who manages to unsettle a

whole corporation through a series of mostly well-intended but ultimatelyinappropriate actions. On a second level, the book perceptively describes the

clash between two dramatically diff erent cultures. At the same time, the novel

can be read as a story of doomed lesbian love. While there is no denying that

all these levels conflate to create the complex atmosphere of the narrative, I am

more interested in how the last level, that of the love story,fleshes out the most

obvious reference of the book: its title is a playful reference to Søren Kierke-

gaard’s homonymous book Fear and Trembling.5

As stated in the introduction, my main focus is the decontextualized proba-bility of connection between disparate couples. In the novel there are two of

relevance: first, Amélie and Fubuki as amorous subjects; second, the relation

between normative compliance and love. The first, because of its repeatability








349

Phi l ippopoulos-Miha lopoulos •


of subject positioning, operates as a paradigm case for the reader’s identi

fica-

tion. The repeatability of the situation (for eachamoureux, however banal, the

situation always appears unique as another “once”6

) is endorsed by NiklasLuhmann’s treatise on love, which appropriately describes a code of love from

the angle of French literature.7 Seen from this perspective, love “is not itself a

feeling, but rather a code of communication, according to the rules of which

one can express, form, and simulate feelings, deny them, impute them to

others, and be prepared to face up to all the consequences which enacting such

a communication may bring with it.”8 Such codi

fication is not, as it would ini-

tially seem, a way of distancing the amorous subject from her feelings. On the

contrary, it is a way of increasing the probabilities of love’s occurring in situ-ations where, had it not been for the code, love would have appeared improb-

able: as Luhmann rather ungenerously puts it, “love is thus shown to be not a

mere anomaly, but indeed a quite normal improbability.”9

Although Luhmann’s codi

fication of love literature is useful for the instant

search of a code, it is not su

fficiently decontextualized. Luhmann’s code refers

to the literary expression of improbability. I, on the other hand, am interested

in the actual occurrences of the code and its operation as the facilitator of

improbable couplings. Thus, in the following section, while employing Luh-

mann’s codification, I focus on the analysis of the second couple of the novel

(Japanese corporate normativity/love), which, although more abstract than

the one involving individuals, seems to be operating in a comparable way. In

that sense, one can talk about the code of improbability that operates in an

always identical (“every time”), yet always diff erent (“once”) manner.

I N L O V E / O U T O F L A W

When Amélie first enters the Yomimoto building, she experiences a pre-

Edenic vacuum: “There was nothing in my mind but the fascination for the

void I could see through the window” (). The thing that manages to pull her

out of such a void is the appearance of Fubuki. Fubuki is described in typically

exaggerated phraseology: “A maiden, tall and long like an arch, walked

towards me. Whenever I think of Fubuki, I see the Japanese arch, alwaysgreater than man” (); “You are sublime, Olympian, the masterpiece of this

planet” (); and, “Fubuki incarnated the perfection of Japanese beauty, save

for her exceptionally stupefying height. Her face was like the ‘Marigold of








350


Volume 15, Number 3

Japan,’ symbol of the noble maiden of pastimes: placed on such an immense

silhouette, it was destined to dominate the world” (). Such “overexagger-

ated, ‘involutively’ developed and superlative linguistic forms” are, accordingto Luhmann, a way out of the paradoxes of love (such as submission to and

colonization of the other, or lament for and glorification of the other’s freedom

to refuse my advances).10 Indeed,

[t]he various paradoxes (conquering self-subjugation, desired suff ering, vision

in blindness, a preference for illness, for imprisonment, and sweet martyrdom)

converge in what the code proposes is central in love, namely: immoderateness,

excessiveness. . . . Excessiveness itself becomes the measure of all behaviour.11

Excess blurs the pain of the most obvious paradox (“How can you not love me

when I love you?”) and, as such, becomes the obvious code of amorous

expression. Excess demands, Luhmann continues, “a more or less pronounced

distancing from raison or prudence. Showing that one could control one’s pas-

sion would be a poor way of showing passion.”12 Although the latter may not

accord with the Anglo-Saxon psyche (or self-descriptions thereof), continen-

tal love literature seems to prefer the bombastic and rebellious at least as a

prima facie convincing indication of one’s ability to emulate the behavioral

ways of love. Such rebelliousness expresses itself in various overspills. Luh-

mann identifies behavioral limits set by family, the laws of conversational

sociability, and “expectations and interwoven complexes of rights and duties

in the sense of us.”13 And he quotes from a novel: “Je ne sçay rien qui

resemble moins à l’amour que le devoir.”14 So what better than to defy duty ,

however defined, to prove devotion?

The above is of more than passing relevance to the novel. Amélie, a genu-

ine representative of Frenchamour passion, commits the obligatory transgres-

sion of normativity, both as a cry for attention (“I defy everything to be with

you”) and as a heroic move. The banality of the transgression is avoided by

the peculiarity of the specific geographic and institutional context. A Japanese

corporation is not the cinematographically explosive Parisian bistro. Japanese

society is a historically juridified society. Political, business, and intrapersonal

behavior has in its core the First Constitution of Japan in its unaltered form ascreated by the Buddhist Prince Shotoku Taishi in a.d.15 Although fourteen

centuries old, the Shotoku Constitution is the foundational set of principles that

shapes Japanese normativity. Its relevance is not simply found in a sedimentary








351

Phi l ippopoulos-Miha lopoulos • The Suspension of Suspension

interpretation of the principles but in almost verbatim incorporation of the

articles in the regulatory institutional framework. The seventeen articles of

the Constitution focus on the idea of harmony with others, which alsoincludes mandates for nonopposition, division of functions among officers,

maintenance of decorous behavior, and blind obedience to the pronounce-

ments of the hierarchically superior. Amélie, however well-meaning, man-

aged to flout all the above. Even before she started working she was an aberra-

tion, at least according to the Seventh Article of the Constitution, which

invites the Japanese to “let every man his own charge and let not the spheres

of duty be confused. . . . The wise sovereigns of antiquity seek the man to fill

the office, and not the office for the sake of the man.”16 Amélie did not knowwhat she was employed for, and, although the position was apparently deter-

mined, her duties were not; as a result, she spent days having nothing to do.

When she was finally assigned tasks, she exceeded her duties (partly because

she wanted to impress Fubuki), thereby off ending the sense of decorum and

privacy of her colleagues. For example, when she was given filing to do, she

learned by heart all the personal data of the company employees, such as birth-

days, names of spouses and children, and so on. It is no surprise, then, that

Amélie acted blatantly against Japanese decorum as defined by the Fourth Arti-

cle of the Shotoku Constitution (“functionaries should make decorous behav-

iour their leading principle”) when she took it upon herself to wish “best wishes

for your little son Yoshiro, on the occasion of his third birthday today” ().

Another incident involved Amélie helping a colleague close a deal with a

Belgian butter producer. Although successful, her contribution was clearly

beyond the scope of her duties, which at the time were reduced to photocopy-

ing. When she was called to be reprimanded, she tried to help her appropri-ately obedient and silent colleague by raising her voice against her boss ().

Fatal mistake: her disobedience and desire to stand up for her colleague was a

direct off ence to the Japanese corporate normativity—Article Three: “when

the lord speaks, the vassal listens”; Article Ten: “let us cease from wrath and

refrain from angry looks . . . Although others give way to anger, let us on the

contrary dread our own faults, and though we alone may be in the right, let us

follow the multitude and act like them” (Shotoku Constitution).17 Obedience

and hierarchy are not simply a matter of efficiency: they are the basis of all cor-porate Japanese structures. The priority of public over private interest, as seen

in Article Fifteen of Shotoku Constitution: “turn away from that which is pri-

vate, and set our faces towards that which is public,” is a necessary guarantee,








352

Law & Li terature • Volume 15, Number 3

not of fairness but of harmony. Indeed, all Constitutional commands spring

from the first article which decrees: “Harmony is to be valued, and an avoid-

ance of wanton opposition to be honoured” (Shotoku Constitution).Although hoping to be useful, Amélie persistently disrupts the corporate

norms. Fubuki reacts to all this in a mode that oscillates from the astonished to

the despising. But it is these reactions that nourish Amélie’s love for Fubuki.

Everything that happens in the book is connected, in one way or another, with

Fubuki and her reactions. Fubuki’s role in the incident or even simply com-

ments on Fubuki’s stance that have little to do with the preceding narrative

event, off er the link between Amélie’s unruly behavior and her love for

Fubuki. Amélie’s misbehaving is the deliberate means by which she feels thatshe makes her presence felt to Fubuki. Indeed, ignorance of the norms is ruled

out from the very first paragraphs of the book: “Mr. Haneda was Mr. Omo-

chi’s superior, who was Mr. Saito’s superior, who was Miss Mori’s superior,

who was my superior. I was no one’s superior . . . In the Yomimoto company

I was under everyone’s orders” (). Amélie’s understanding of normativity is

supported by the fact that she (the novel’s heroine, like the author) was born

and brought up in Japan. Amélie is experiencing a clash, which is nothing else

but a “minor jurisprudence,” a constitutional judgment that departs from the

masculine order and transubstantiates the personal and the legal, aff ection and

knowledge.18 But, just as every minor jurisprudence is an act of resistance,

Amélie’s osmosis is negative and expresses itself as a discontinuity, an inter-

ruption between love and law. Amélie articulates this in a dialogue with

Fubuki when she asks the latter whether regulations are more important to her

than friendship (). Fubuki gives a cold and divertive answer—to recall Good-

rich, “a wet dream was met with dry words”

19

—but what is signifi

cant in thisscene is that Amélie realizes and expresses the discontinuity between norm

and intimacy.

The discontinuity in question, however, is not unidirectional but circular.

When Amélie says to Fubuki (or rather imagines saying, because she never

really says it) that she should stop behaving all sweetly and obligingly to men

whom she may fancy, because “you are much more seductive when you insult

me and treat me like a stinking fish” (), she points to a certain circularity:

the fact that Fubuki does not approve of her inappropriate behavior (and, a fortiori , Amélie’s normative excess) is the conditio sine qua non for being in love

with her. Only if Fubuki behaves badly to her (and Fubuki does that when she

disapproves of Amélie’s rebellious behavior) can Amélie love her. Her love is








353


magnanimous and unconditional and expresses itself as a conscious sidestep-

ping of normativity, a proto-christian self-victimization that elevates the self

to the abasement of the one who always off ers without expecting anything inreturn. Indeed, Amélie never complains about the lack of reciprocation; if

anything, she carries onflouting the corporate norms in order to off er freely her

non-possessive love to Fubuki and to carry on being consequently rejected by

the latter. Her love expects nothing in return—and anything more than noth-

ing would never do.20 The realization and action upon the discontinuity between

norm and love is the necessary condition of the fulfillment of Amélie’s ulti-

mate goal, which would be her love for Fubuki.

At this point, and in view of the obliging title of the novel, it would be spec-tacularly difficult to avoid being reminded of the famous Kierkegaardian sus-

pension. This is precisely the focus of the following section, which deals less

with what is suspended and more with the operation of suspension as a means

of fulfillment of a telos.

S U S P E N S I O N

Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling is dedicated to a discontinuity like the

one described above. Its focus is the mundane and extramundane sides of

Abraham’s dilemma when he was asked by God to sacrifice his only son Isaac.

The well-known biblical incident involves Abraham’s unreserved compliance

with God’s command to sacrifice Isaac, which is subsequently alleviated by

another godly intervention, this time replacing Isaac with a lamb for the sacri-

fice. Kierkegaard’s take on the story is deeply religious. He starts by eulogiz-

ing Abraham’s unique greatness (“no one was as great as Abraham”), at the

same time admitting that his act lies beyond understanding (“who is able to

understand him?”).21 Kierkegaard describes Abraham’s greatness as being

beyond human understanding and based on the strength of the absurd.22 The

absurdity of Abraham’s act can only be condemned if judged by ethical stan-

dards.23 Kierkegaard’s view is not that Abraham is unethical. In an attempt to

confer upon religious faith the position that he thought proper (rather than

subsumed to some ethical or intellectual consideration as Kant or Hegel wouldhave), Kierkegaard suggests that the religious goes beyond the ethical. This

discontinuity is expressed in the controversialfifth part of his book entitled Is

There a Teleological Suspension of the Ethical? to which Kierkegaard answers in








354


the affirmative. The suspension is the operative medium of discontinuity,

since the suspension of the ethical is the precondition for faith. The latter is

reflected in the choice of the epithet (“teleological”) that appears in the title of the section.

The connection between Fear and Trembling and Stupeur et Tremblements is

not just a tenuous one based on title playfulness. Several parallels between the

two texts can be drawn, some of which will be pointed out below. However,

the focal point of the present discussion is the way suspension operates in

both cases as a “cut” between two seemingly compatible—or at least not

antithetical—but ultimately incommensurable sets of values (ethical and

religious/legal and amorous/Fubuki and Amélie). While the ethical can gen-erally be assumed either to emanate from or to be, at least in its basic com-

mandments, close to the religious, Abraham’s story shows otherwise. The

impossibility of understanding Abraham’s act through the normal ethical

channels is what makes Kierkegaard argue for the suspension of the ethical as

the way in which the discontinuity between these two values can operate pos-

itively for an understanding of Abraham’s act. This is the kind of suspension

Amélie performs: she suspends the normative in order to express her love for

Fubuki. The suspension of such normativity is the precondition of love.

Amélie emulates Abraham when she acts in a way no one understands or justi-

fies. She suspends the normative frame that surrounds her in order to reach the

beyond of love.

For both Abraham and Amélie, suspension breeds greatness. For Amélie,

Fubuki is the ascension of the mundane to the cosmic through the intramun-

dane. To put it in Kierkegaardian terms, Amélie looks into her finitude to

reach the infi

nity. Such combination is the idiom of greatness: “he is continu-ally making the movement of infinity, but he makes it with such accuracy and

poise that he is continually getting finitude out of it.”24 Greatness in other

words is the operational combination between the finite and infinite in an

unprepossessing way: “to him finitude tastes as good as to one who has never

known anything higher.”25 But greatness’s greatest cumber is its incompre-

hensibility. Kierkegaard does not purport to understand Abraham—and here

the choice of the pseudonym under which Fear and Trembling appeared is

significant. “Johannes de Silentio” cannot speak for Abraham: “I am all thetime aware of that monstrous paradox that is the content of Abraham’s life, I

am constantly repulsed, and my thought, for all its passion, is unable to enter

into it, cannot come one hairbreadth further. I strain every muscle to catch








355


sight of it, but the same instant I become paralysed.”26 No one can speak of

Abraham’s greatness. It lies in the wastelands of the paradox, the faith in a telos

that is always to come. Equally, Nothomb never explains or gives insight intothe motives of Amélie. One could dismiss Amélie as a masochist, an ignorant

foreigner, or simply an idiot. Her Japanese colleagues have dismissed her as a

subversive element that needs to be ostracized from the company. Amélie can-

not explain why she does what she does. But Kierkegaard lyrically explains:

“. . . Abraham, great with the power whose strength is powerlessness, great in

that wisdom whose secret is folly, great in that hope whose outward form is

insanity, great in that love which is hatred of self.”27 Breaking away from the

norm results in a passivity that indeed resembles self-hatred: “My spirit didnot belong to the race of conquerors, but to that of tied up cows, patiently

awaiting their final salvation. It felt so good to live without pride or intelli-

gence. I was hibernating” (). Later, not without traces of irony, she adds, “I,

too, was a poor crucified. What always appealed to me in crucifixion was the

end. I would finally stop suff ering” (). Nothomb is conscious of the

Kierkegaardian references of religious metaphors. Equally, Amélie is con-

scious of the grandeur only dimly veiled by her incomprehensibility: “I left

the earthly realm to join the orders of Angels” (); and later, “when I was lit-

tle, I wanted to become God. Very quickly I realised that that was too much to

ask, and I put some holy water in my table wine: I would become Jesus. I soon

became aware of my excessive ambition andfinally accepted that when I grew

up I would become a ‘martyr’” (). Kierkegaard has little to do with Noth-

omb’s irony,28 but irony in the latter case simply adds to the incomprehensibil-

ity and necessary distancing of the reader from the heroine.

Thus, it is with diff

erent eyes that one is to approach the couple Amélie/Abraham. As a basis for understanding, Japanese normativity is as bad as

Enlightenment ethics. What is needed is a belief in “the ridiculous,”29 “the

strength of the absurd,”30 the acceptance of the “unmediated paradox.”31 We

need to follow our heroes in their suspension of the universal for the telos of

the particular: “In his action, [Abraham] overstepped the ethical altogether,

and had a higher telos outside it, in relation to which he suspended it. For how

could one ever bring Abraham’s action into relationship with the universal?

How could any point of contact ever be discovered between what Abrahamdid and the universal, other than that Abraham overstepped it?”32 Thus, Abra-

ham oversteps (suspends, interrupts, discontinues) the universal in order to

achieve the promise of the beyond, the greatness of the individual telos.








356


“The single individual is higher than the universal, though in such a way,

be it noted, that the movement is repeated , that is, having been in the uni-

versal, the single individual now sets himself apart as the particular abovethe universal.”33

What is remarkable about this movement is its repetition. The glorious

particularity of the telos is as fragile as the mobility of the suspendable since the

movement is circular. At this point, the first sufficiently decontextualized

observation on the code of the improbable can be made. Decontextualization

is possible because it is irrelevant whether one refers to the Kierkegaardian

ethical, the Japanese normative, or the individual universal as the suspendable

in each case. The substantive pales when faced with the superlative operationof suspension. The reason for such retreat is antifoundational: the substantive

is not here to stay. From the point of view of selection, if a decision refers to

the selection between the given (or the suspendable) and the telos, there can be

no decision that will guarantee the eternal stability of the selected value. The

operation of suspension is unique (for that pair of concepts) and infinitely

repeatable (for that pair and for every pair): once upon every time, a suspen-

sion denuded from its substantive traits paints the landscape for its eternal

return. For any selection that singles out the suspendable and focuses on the

telos is at the same time reversing their positions and renders suspendable what

used to be telos. Thus, while fulfilling a telos would have been a utopian impos-

sibility, the operation of suspension converts the impossible to improbable:

while the former does not feature in the horizon of possibilities, the latter

appears as a matter of degree; while impossibility is an annulment of selection,

improbability remains a contingency, however remote. Thus, fulfillment of

telos is improbable because of the precariousness of its position. If telos isreached, it automatically baptizes the other value as telos. In that sense, one can

talk about a “circular discontinuity,” according to which the suspension of the

one is the precondition for the materialization of the other. And this is seen

both in the legal/amorous and the ethical/religious.

The code of the improbable is slowly taking shape: the operation of suspen-

sion is the first step toward linking disparate values. But suspension is not

enough. The notion of suspension of suspension is the full link between values

whose coupling would seem impossible.34

Suspension of suspension marriesthe two contingencies of suspension and selection, prioritizing only their

inherent interchangeability. Thus, in my attempt to proceed with the decon-

textualization of the code of the improbable, I apply the above “procedural”








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description of suspension to another discontinuous dyad: law and justice. The

pair has been famously dealt with by Derrida, and, at risk of being tedious, I

revisit “Force of Law” and exert a critique greatly based on the idea of therepeatability of the act of suspension and the circular discontinuity between

the two values, which is constituent of internal instability of each telos.

S U S P E N S I O N O F S U S P E N S I O N

We know from Derrida that justice, if such a thing exists, exists outside or

beyond law:35 “[J]ustice would be the experience that we are not able to expe-rience.”36 “Law (droit ) is not justice.”37 “Justice exceeds law and calculation.”38

Derrida describes justice as a phantasmic, incalculable chimera that can only

be negotiated outside the law, exactly as religious faith is outside the ethical

and love is outside normativity. But, according to Derrida, justice, although

incalculable, asks us to calculate, to negotiate its advent: “[a]nd so incalculable

justice requires us to calculate. And first, closest to what we associate with jus-

tice, namely, law, the juridical field that one cannot isolate within sure fron-

tiers.”39 The calculation for Derrida refers not to law (the calculable par excel-

lence), nor to justice, but to their relation: “Not only must we calculate,

negotiate the relation between the calculable and the incalculable . . . This

requirement does not properly belong either to justice or to law. It only

belongs to either of these domains by exceeding each one in the direction of

the other.”40 Clearly, calculation is not simply a matter of programming. The

impossibility of the relation between calculable and incalculable is aporetically

the necessary condition for the possibility of justice: “thecondition of possibility of the event is also its condition of impossibility.”41 For Derrida, the combina-

tion of possibility and impossibility is what makes justice unattainable yet

worth striving for. Justice, like democracy, is “always untenable at least for the

reason that it calls for the infinite respect of the singularityand infinite alterity

of the other as much as for the respect for the countable, calculable, subjectal

equality between anonymous singularities.”42 The codification of what Der-

rida considers the condition of im/possibility is the focus of this section: put-

ting the two together produces a coupling, which, precisely because of its apo-ria, exceeds impossibility and reaches for improbability. As I show below,

codification of improbability along the lines of suspension brings together two

mutually exclusive values through a process of circularity and internalization.








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Derrida suggests an expansion and resemiologization of the limits of law

and justice with a view to facilitate the “advent” of the latter. To link it with the

previous discussion, Derrida suggests that law needs to be suspended in orderto “achieve” justice. As Howells puts it, “it is the mismatch between law and

justice . . . which is the very condition of justice.”44 By this, Derrida does not

imply that justice is a product of over-theorization or abstraction. He does not

prioritize justice in that respect; this is obvious from his more polemic writings

that clearly emphasize a “hands-on” approach to matters of justice.45 There is

no simple binarism such as law ϭ calculable, justice ϭ incalculable. Derrida

has already rejected this in Specters of Marx when instituting the ghost as the

unpresence that “exceeds a binary or dialectical logic, the logic that distin-guishes or opposes e ff ectivity or actuality . . . and ideality.”46 For Derrida, jus-

tice remains “calculable” in its full aporetic sense. However, such calculation

is performed only after and beyond the law. Justice is the permanent telos of

the law, the preferred albeit utopian contingency of the legal decision; in this

sense, justice is prioritized over law. Thus, justice (as telos) can only be

achieved through the suspension of the law (as given). To be sure, this is not

an easy matter. The seemingly guaranteed eff ect of suspension is rightly com-

plicated by Derrida’s famous proclamation of the ghost of the undecidable.47

He writes: “[t]he undecidable . . . is not merely the oscillation between two

significations or two contradictory and very determinate rules, each equally

imperative.”48 Instead, the undecidable is, once again, the elusiveness of jus-

tice when it comes to a decision, either because without the undecidable it may

simply be legal, or because, after the moment of undecidability has passed, the

decision will no longer be “ presently just, fully just.”49 Indeed, “[t]he undecid-

able remains caught, lodged, at least as a ghost—but an essential ghost—inevery decision, in every event of decision.”50

Derrida’s suspension of law for justice is another example of the disconti-

nuity of values. The diff erence with the present analysis is that Derrida does not

dwell on the circularity of that discontinuity. Thus, as soon as justice is

achieved (as telos), it becomes given, and its suspension is the precondition for

the law. In the way of circular discontinuity, law and justice become equal but

unconnected partners in a binarism whose values exclude each other only in

anticipation of their own subsequent exclusion. Stopping, as Derrida does, atthe proposition that suspension of the law is the precondition for justice, is

admittedly an optimistic message. The supposition that through “calculable”

suspension one can reach one’s goal echoes one side—the edifying side—of








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the circularity. Unfortunately, what is sous rature seems to be returning perpet-

ually only to be submitted to the same slippery game. Justice is yet to come, as

Derrida says,51

but its absence has already returned. Law has never been seenby Derrida as the potential goal of justice. One, of course, could argue that law

per se is beyond origin, history, calculation.52 Indeed, the aporia of law emerges

precisely from its lack of external grounding, from its self-grounding and its

self-initio, and this constitutes the condition for both its deconstructibility and

the possibility of its existence. This observation places law beyond external

teleologies. But this is hardly surprising, peculiar to law, or novel, especially if

one observes law as it stands behind the Kafkian gates or, in other words,

behind its systemic boundaries.53 When, however, law is brought out of its iso-lation and is made to face justice, it becomes the deconstructible (and calcu-

lable) breeding ground of justice while the latter is allowed to remain forever

beyond deconstruction.54 Law and its aporia are quickly converted into the

necessary condition of the ultimate aporia: that between the calculable and

the incalculable of judgment. As Beardsworth puts it, “thinking of aporia is

understood by Derrida as a thinking of law, and this thinking . . . is the condi-

tion and in a sense, ‘measure’ of judgements.”55 In “Force of Law,” Derrida

asks if justice—along with deconstruction—exists. An interpretation of the

question is given by Howells: “clearly both justice and deconstruction ‘exist’

in the usual common-sense meaning of the term, but Derrida is asking rather

if they can be said to exist in a pure form. It is as embodied in the law that jus-

tice can be deconstructed precisely because it was ‘constructed’ in the first

place.”56 Thus, while justice in its pure form is undeconstructible and always

to come, justice in relation to law is embodied in the law because it has been

constructed by law. Derrida never suggests the obverse, namely that law isalso constructed by justice. Even when law is aporetic, especially in its form as

law of the law, it still incarnates the ideal of justice.57 Thinking of law is the

condition of judgment, a necessary judgment that, in its promise of the future,

is always to be repeated, deferred, to the telos of justice; but never to return to

law.

By accepting justice as the telos of law without accepting at the same time

law as the telos of justice, one delegates law into the position of a secondary,

prerequisite step toward justice. Justice can only maintain its aporetic natureas both desirable and unreachable precisely because of the internalization

(internal construction) of law within justice. The fact that, despite its untena-

bility, the struggle to reach justice never ceases is because justice can only be








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reached and not reached through law. Justice’s return to law is the condition for

its illusionary reachability and the guarantee for its perpetual elusiveness. Law

facilitates as well as incapacitates justice. It is the force of law that is the condi-tion of both justice’s possibility and impossibility. That is why justice must

return to law circularly; namely, it needs to be suspended and resemiologize

law as its telos. Justice cannot operate without some kind of formative regula-

tory network, which necessarily presupposes and entails the unjust, either in

the form of violence (as connection) or in the form of margin for future adap-

tation or accommodation of new data. Consequently, when in the previous

section I targeted suspension as a means of circularity, I was pointing to the

phantasmic, always elusive nature of both values (there, legal/amorous andethical/religious; here, law/justice) in their interchangeability as suspend-

able and telos. Neither law nor justice can be given at any point without simul-

taneously destroying themselves in order to renew themselves as telos. In

other words, law is always a contingency of justice, just as justice is always a

contingency of law.58

Arguably, the moment of undecidability, by its very nature as a passe-par-tout

in the event of judgment, does suggest a certain circularity between law and

justice.59 Although the undecidable is once again geared toward the decision

that will cut the aporia (that is the legal decision that addresses justice), Der-

rida sees the “ordeal of the undecidable” as the condition of the im/possibility

of justice. If such circularity allows us to construct undecidability, not only as

the precondition for (or embodiment of absence of) justice but also as the pre-

condition for law, then the concept can be of relevance here. The ghost of the

undecidable, at least for the purposes of the present discussion, can be seen as

the contingency of a selection, be it between just and unjust or lawful andunlawful. Although wedged in between the events of a decision, the undecid-

able is the gate to the horizon of probabilities, the values-that-have-not-

been-chosen-but-could-have-and-still-can. This uncertainty allows each

selected value to balance itself against the nonselected values in all their

fuzzy improbability. To put it diff erently, undecidability allows the selected

value to take a glimpse of the excluded other. But such realization of alterity

can only be thought of as taking place exclusively through and in spite of the

self: “through” because it is through the internalization of undecidability(or the horizon of probabilities) that the self can appreciate alterity; and “in

spite of ” because it is only through suspension of the self that alterity could

be materialized.








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The above is not simple circularity of suspension; it further includes the

element of internalization of such circularity. Indeed, suspension of one value

for the other is not an adequate concept to describe the final paradox: instead,what is to be suspended is suspension itself. Suspension of suspension occurs at

the moment where the suspendable value sees through and in spite of itself the

perpetually repeated interchangeability of positions with the expected telos. It

is the space of negation of telos within the suspendable, the knowledge that telos

will become suspendable even before it is fulfilled. In other words, the self

realizes that there is a space of ignorance within the self that signals the even-

tual materialization of alterity. Suspension of suspension is the unprioritized

coexistence of this ignorance/knowledge. Thus, the impression of positiviza-tion that the double suspension may lead to (suspension of suspension ϭ no

suspension) should be abandoned for a more elaborate construction: that both

the positivity of suspension of suspension and the negativity of suspension

coexist in this self-devouring genitive. Suspension of suspension operates in its

dual level of interruption and continuance of circularity (which is also based on

interruption). In that way, the two values can materialize their improbability of

coupling and start (not) being together. The suspension of suspension is the

completed form of the code of the improbable because it brings together the

opposing contingencies of a binarism by exceeding impossibility.

Thus, if Derridean undecidability is the means through which a value real-

izes the contingency of other value(s), it is also the means that augurs the anni-

hilation of telos as final destination. Knowing that telos is only a stage before

the suspendable brings a realization of the repeatability of selection. The secu-

rity of every selection is nullified in the face of its repeatability: suspension of

the given does not lead to telos but to another suspension. Suspension of sus-pension, as induced by undecidability, is the moment when any supposedly

teleological suspension is denuded from its teleology and is instead turned

inwardly only to see that it includes within itself the suspension of itself. From

an external observer’s point of view, suspension of suspension is theawareness

of the impossibility of fulfillment of telos through suspension. It is the discov-

ery of ignorance within oneself, where the self stops (suspends its suspension)

and feels lost as to its previously certain decision.

Thus, the moment of the second suspension is to be understood as themoment in which it becomes obvious that the impossibility of a finite just/

lawful/ethical decision cannot only be attributed to the chimeras that lie

beyond the decision. For even when the codes of chimeras are mastered and








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illusions of their fulfillment are convincingly, albeit fleetingly, manufactured,

these chimeras retain within themselves the suspendability of the given. This

is the moment of fear and of trembling: when it becomes obvious that no selec-tion, however holy, just, ethical, or lawful, is here to stay. Fear and Trembling

becomes Stupeur et Tremblements, a plural explosion of existential sadness and

horror when one realizes that one’s painful, incomprehensible, abominable

teleological transgression does not lead anywhere but to another transgres-

sion, and then another, and another, in the inexhaustible inevitable endless

series of transgressions that repeat themselves on opposite mirrors, one within

the other and one outside the other, a relentless phrase read both directions, a

mise en abyme without respite or—what is worse—the illusion of respite.60

Internalization of circularity is a particularly important concept to the under-

standing of the suspension of suspension. It is only through internalization that

a bridge across the ignorance of alterity is built. Internalization can be better

explained by recourse to Luhmann’s concept of form. A form is a pre-Edenic

binarism both values of which coexist in a state of contingency. However, a form

is not operational.61 This means that neither of the values can make use of the

other. Forms for Luhmann are simply an epistemological stage before selection.

Suspension of suspension can be seen as a Luhmannian form, but with a signifi-

cant diff erence that has been already suggested: here, the di ff erence of the other side

is internalized in each side as awareness of ignorance of the other. In other words, in

suspension of suspension each side internalizes the other in the form of igno-

rance of the other’s operations. Internalization in this case is the retention—

within either side—of a space of ignorance of the other side. Internalization, as

opposed to Derrida’s excess of calculability (“It only belongs to either of these

domains by exceeding each one in the direction of the other”

62

), off

ers the possi-bility of awareness of the other side. Of course, law never knows what justice is,

neither does justice ever know what law is. This ignorance, however, is coated in

a façade of positivity. Thus, each side is aware of the inevitability of the other

side (knowledge) but ignores the other side’s particular codes and operations

(ignorance). So both law and justice construct an impression of each other,

which they internalize as a space of ignorance of the other but coated in the illu-

sion of knowledge.63 In other words, teloscontains within itself its contingency as

suspendable but without treating such awareness either as threatening or indeedas operable. Operability resides strictly within suspension.

Let me further clarify the internal position by returning to a Belgian soul

who, amid her tortures, discovers the other ingredient of her love: internaliza-








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tion of the other’s diff erence as the only way in which suspension and its sus-

pension can carry on their maudit cycle. Amélie’s professional development in

the Yomimoto company is less than enviable. Her final position is as a daytimetoilet cleaner. However, she has something to look forward to everyday:

Fubuki uses the same toilets. In fact, Fubuki is the only other female employee

on the floor serviced by these toilets. The women’s toilets become a space of

internalization of Amélie’s love for Fubuki, a court of love, “a close, Racinian

space, where the two heroines of the tragedy met several times a day to write a

new episode in their ruptuous, enraged passion” (). The toilets have become

the geography of totality with the other, a closed circle of lost references based

on the absoluteness of unreciprocated love. Geographical closure in the noveloperates as an allusion to the internalization of the amorous object. In love, just

as in the suspension of suspension, the process is always internalized in either

side of the contingent pair. Pascal writes: “as we cannot love what is outside us,

we must love a being who is within us but is not our own self.”64 Ferguson,

quoting Pascal, puts it in a way reminiscent of Husserlian intentionality:

It is the power of his own soul, casting about it, as it were, an aura of attractive-

ness, which confers upon external things their quality of beauty. Only those

objects which “partake of his own resemblance” have the power to attract, and

this resemblance is just a consequence of a projective external-ization [ sic ] of

our own self-image. All love, in fact, is self-love.65

In Works of Love, Kierkegaard also equates love for the other with self-love:

“the beloved and the friend are called, remarkably and profoundly, to be sure,

theother self , the other I.”66 The other is an extension of the self when it comes to

love, because this is the only way in which the (illusion of the) unity of diff erence

can be “fulfilled.” This is what Luhmann calls “reflexive love,”67 or else the love

of the “us” as a potential unity, an internalized projection of the self and other as

seen by the other, but through the only vocabulary I know: my own.68 If love is

the love of the diff erent dis-unity as internalized by myself, then all love is self-

love because the self includes the other (just as the other includes the self).

The operationality of internalization is guaranteed by the suspension and

its suspension. The two bring discontinuity, which can be seen equally inAmélie and in the interchangeability between law and justice. In order to exist,

Amélie’s love presupposes internalization. Likewise, in order for justice/law

to exist, one internalizes an illusion of unity with the other, which is based on








364


a familiarized ignorance of the other. In a process of improbability, everything

is internalized because unity, being an impossibility, can never be shared

except as a mutually internalized construction of diff erence. Thus, each sidegoes on a spiral of internalized circularity where both the constructed other

and the constructed self perpetually swap positions as suspendable and telos.

The code of improbability is precisely this: one abandons oneself to reach for

the other (suspension), only to discover that the other lies within the self as a

space of perpetual ignorance, which, in its contingency as telos, guarantees the

return to the self (suspension of suspension).

To sum up, coupling with the improbable other is the internalization of my

ignorance of her (since she remains the absolute other) in such a way that itwould be neither threatening nor operable.69 Its operability takes place through

a suspension and a suspension of suspension: the former allows me to flee

myself and reach out for the other; the latter brings me back to the safety of the

self, while allowing for the other to project her ideal of “us” within herself.

Internalization operates between law and justice in exactly the same manner.

The interchangeability of positions allows for the internalization of a positiv-

ized ignorance of the other side as a perpetual guarantee for instability and

therefore promise of return. The contingency of law, for example, is internal-

ized in justice in the form of a destabilizing certainty, which, although incom-

prehensible in its particulars, remains a respected self-denial. Justice can never

be rid of the internalized law because if it could, it would also be rid of its very

contingency of return. Law and justice, just as self and other in love, are always

already interchangeably asymmetrically unalloyingly suspendable and telos.

The unresolved codification of negativity (suspension) and positivity (sus-

pension of suspension), or else knowledge and ignorance, serves several pur-poses. First, it ensures that the two values (however seemingly improbable in

their coupling) remain distinct, yet readily positioned for cross-checking. Sec-

ond, it facilitates the impression (or the behavioral code) of familiarity and

knowledge of the other, without allowing colonization.70 Put diff erently, it

enables the approximation (or simulation of approximation) of the values

without, however, exposing one to the pressure of an illusionary unity with

the other. Third, it employs a veritably circular motion: in the law/justice

pairing, the motion goes from law to justice to law ad infinitum. Thus, it aban-dons the teleological idea that justice is always the goal, which takes law as a

given and as a means. Finally, it reinstates both justice and law as eternally

chimeric but always capturable through—and this is the final diff erence from








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Derrida’s ghost—the negative presence of the one within the other through

internalization. Needless to say, such capturability is conditioned upon the abil-

ity of telos never to be captured—a deferral, except that the impossibility of itsorigin is internalized. But it is the internalization of this impossibility that

makes each value settle for the illusionary unity with the other, however

improbable that illusion may be. In that sense, teleology no longer means the

suspension of the given in order to reach the telos; instead, it signifies the sus-

pension of the given in order to put the cycle into motion. And this cycle is

what makes both hemispheres, while looking at each other, think that they are

only looking at themselves . . . Could this be the beginning of a rather typical

love aff air?

R O U N D A N D R O U N D

“The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the rela-

tion [which accounts for it] that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self

is not the relation but [consists in the fact] that the relation relates itself to its

own self. Man is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite.”71 To put this in a

manner that flirts with simplification, the self is, on the one hand, the relation

between the relation between the self and itself per se, and on the other, this

relation itself. Kierkegaard sees the self as a reflection upon the unity of the

diff erence between the self and itself, a thought on an act of fine balancing

between thefinite and the infinite, a mirroring of a hand stretching out to reach

the other and a hand returning to feed the self. It is in such moments of reflec-

tion that the self captures the decontextualized operation of the cycle betweenwhatever there is and whatever there is to come. And these are always “there,”

presently or in presence, both simultaneously and diff erently, in contingency

and suspension. At such moments, the self fears and trembles before the

relentless catenation of the given and the telos and the spectacular fall that lies

behind any attempt to select either of the two values and remain there.

Fortunately, there is always the other side to fall back on. The other is not

something to be found simply beyond the one on which I try to balance now,

it does not require an eternal sliding farther and farther afield. It simplyrequires of me to look at the other side of the wheel and jump on it. There is

certainly no respite in such leaping about, but there can be familiarity, ease,

“understanding.” Not of course of the other, never of the other, because other-








366


wise temptation arises and makes me want to be the other or be the other too.

It is only an understanding of my impossibility to understand, but at least it is

probable to understand this: that I don’t understand. This is the only possiblecode or calculation: a code that decodifies itself as soon as broken. Thus, I sim-

ulate, play around with my illusions, imagine connections, unities, tautologies

whose veracity I check by constantly balancing, not between the one and the

other, but between each selection and unselection, between each act of suspen-

sion and of suspension of suspension, between the self and itself. The only

way I can carry on is by going round, balancing between going and not going.

This is where the operational inexorability of the act of suspension is thrown

into relief. The trajectory had several stages:first, the suspension of Japanesecompany rules for the love of a Japanese administrator; then, the suspension

of normativity for the fulfillment of unreciprocated love; further, the suspen-

sion of law for justice, and the suspension of justice for law; to end up finally

to the internalized suspension of suspension for the return of suspension. All

these stages, however disparate and seemingly risky in their combinations,

share the same desire for a code that promises some measure of probability.

The use of texts as diverse as Fear and Trembling , “Force of Law,” and Love as

Passion, had one underlying, “codifying” purpose: to show that the only way

to put together similarity and diff erence is through an internalized circular dis-

continuity. In other words, the code is constantly uncodifiable, for, as soon as

suspension determines the given and the telos, the suspension of suspension

reminds us of the interchangeability of the values while removing the floor

underneath our feet. Suspension of suspension is the code for any pair that

tries to combine its incommensurability and targets the improbability of the

combination.Is it true then that “love is the fulfillment of law?” The answer would be the

same if the question were about law and justice, self and other, or indeed about

any pair of disparate concepts: Fubuki never really reciprocated Amélie’s

love, and Amélie was able to carry on off ering her love because of her norma-

tive suspension. So, if fulfillment is suspension, then the edifying answer

should be “yes.” But we forget the other side too, that law is the fulfillment of

love. If we accept that all phrases and not only the ones that mark the way in

and out from the divine geographies can be read ambidirectionally,72

then wecan proceed to the next qualification: that love is not the goal of law, because

love is included, in the form of familiarized ignorance, within law. Thus, it is

only law that is the goal of law; but as soon as law achieves its goal (or an illu-








367


sion thereof ), law becomes the suspendable and is left back or on the other

side ad in fi nitum, every time as another “once.” And once we have accepted

this, we can finally proceed to the last stage of this merry-go-round: that nei-ther can ever be left behind if fulfilled, even if one accepts the possibility of ful-

fillment. Because the fulfillment of one is the fulfillment of the other, and if the

other has not been fulfilled through the fulfilled, then the fulfilled cannot even

fool itself about its supposed fulfillment. And this is good for Japanese corpo-

rations, lesbian love, justice, law, children, lambs, and gods.

. Interviews and press cuts in Italian and French available at the official Amélie Nothomb site http://

www.amelienothomb.com.

. For example, Métaphysique des Tubes (Paris: Albin Michel, ), Hygiène de l’Assasin (Paris: Albin

Michel, ), Les Combustibles (Paris: Albin Michel, ), Péplum (Paris: Albin Michel, ), Robert

des Noms Propres (Paris: Albin Michel, ).

. See the literary review site A la Lettre at http://www.alalettre.com/actualite/nothomb-stupeurs.htm

for information on book and film.

. A. Nothomb, Stupeur et Tremblements (Paris: Albin Michel, ), . The book has been translated in

the United States (Fear and Trembling , Adriana Hunter, trans. [New York: St. Martins Griffin, ]),

however the translations appearing here are mine. Hereafter, references to the text of the book in this

essay will be to the original French edition by way of in-text citation.

. Kierkegaard, Crainte et Tremblement. The French edition of Søren Kierkegaard’s book is entitled

Crainte et Tremblement (Charles Le Blanc, trans. [Paris: Rivages, ]), which means “Fear and Trem-

bling.” I explain the diff erence from the singular to the plural with the concept of repeatability below.

. See also Roland Barthes, Fragments d’un Discours Amoureux (Paris: Seuil, ).

. Niklas Luhmann, Love as Passion: The Codi fi cation of Intimacy , Jeremy Gaines and Doris L. Jones,

trans. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, ), hereafter cited as Love as Passion. Of course Luh-

mann’s perspective is a historical one, starting from the Middle Ages and ending up in contemporary

amorous literary expression. However, his underlying purpose is to provide for a code of love which

applies to the behavioral patterns of the enamored at diff erent stages of maturity (both of literature andof the actual expression of intimacy, see id. at ). Hence, my selective employment of his findings

refers to an attempt to identify the various historical stages as part of one single love story, which can

operate as a typical example of unreciprocated love.

. Id., at .

. Id., at .

. Id., at .

. Id., at (original emphasis).

. Id. (original emphasis).

. Id., at .

. “I know nothing that resembles love less than duty.” From Lettres Nouvelles de M. Boursault (Paris,), cited in Luhmann, supra note at .

. Soito Kobayashi, “Current Status of Stakeholder Involvement in Radiological Issues in Japan: Consid-

eration of Cultural and Social Background,” paper given at the th Meeting of the OECD/NEA (Issy

des Moulineaux: Paris, February – , ).








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. All articles of the a.d. Constitution are available at the Web site of the Korean History Project,

http://www.Koreanhistoryproject.org/Ket/Essays/Tp/TPc.htm, accessed on //. Here-

after cited as Shotoku Constitution.

. The list is as entertaining as it is exaggerated: in the course of the book Amélie sleeps in the office, runsaround naked, is found lying covered by the contents of the rubbish bin, walks on her hands, even

makes good tea and speaks Japanese, which are all veritable faux-pas especially in view of her foreign

origin.

. Peter Goodrich, Law in the Courts of Love: Literature and Other Minor Jurisprudences (London: Rout-

ledge, ).

. Peter Goodrich, “Erotic Melancholia: Law, Literature, and Love,” : Law and Literature –

().

. This is exactly how Kierkegaard deals with agape in his Works of Love, where he refers to Aristotle’s

idea that friendship is the basis for justice. The main characteristic of agape is that it expects nothing in

return. One loves one’s neighbor as oneself, and this love is free from reciprocation, conditionality, andpossessiveness. It is this love, rather than categorical imperatives, that for Kierkegaard amounts to jus-

tice: it is not duty that determines justice but the personal relevance of sociality in an otherwise juridi-

fied world. Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, Howard Hong and Edna Hong, trans. (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, ); see also Either/Or , vol. II, Walter Lowrie, trans. (Princeton: Prince-

ton University Press, ). Amélie’s suspension of norm for justice echoes the Derridean suspension

of law for justice; see below the penultimate section of this article.

. Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling , Alastair Hannay, trans. (London: Penguin Classics, ), .

. Id., at .

. Id., at : “Should that speaker hear word of this, he might go to the man, summon all his clerical

authority, and shout: ‘Loathsome man, dregs of society, what devil has so possessed you that you

wanted to murder your own son?’”

. Id., at .

. Id.

. Id., at – .

. Id., at (emphasis added).

. Although irony features greatly in Kierkegaard’s work. See Andrew Cross, “Neither Either Nor Or:

The Perils of Reflexive Irony,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard , Alastair Hannay and Gor-

don Daniel Marino, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), – .

. Fear and Trembling , supra note at .

. Id., at .

. Id., at .. Id., at .

. Id., at (emphasis added).

. The irreverence of introducing dualisms in Derrida’s thought—the Luhmannian influence will

become even clearer in the following section—is counteracted by the absence of a prioritized contin-

gency at any point during the act of selection between the two values (something of which, ironically,

Derrida could be found guilty, especially in the binarism law/justice; see below).

. Jacques Derrida, “Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority,’” Mary Quaintance, trans. in

Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, Drucilla Cornell, Michel Rosenfeld, and David Gray Carl-

son, eds. (New York: Routledge, ), – (hereafter cited as “Force of Law”).

. Id., at .. Id.

. Id., at .

. Id.

. Id.








369


. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New Inter-

national , P. Kamuf, trans. (London: Routledge, ), .

. Id.

. “Force of Law,” supra note at .. Christina Howells, Derrida: Deconstruction from Phenomenology to Ethics (Cambridge: Polity Press,

), .

. E.g., Cosmopolites de Tous les Pays, Encore un E ff ort! (Paris: Galileé, ) on refugees, or Mary Ann

Caws and Isabelle Lorenz, trans., “The Laws of Reflection: Nelson Mandela, in Admiration” in For

Nelson Mandela, Jacques Derrida and Mustapha Tilli, eds. (New York: Seaver Books, ).

. Specters of Marx, supra note at .

. “Force of Law,” supra note at ff .

. Id., at .

. “Force of Law,” supra note .

. Id.. Id., at .

. Jacques Derrida, “Before the Law,” Avita Ronell and Christine Roulston, trans., in Acts of Literature,

Derek Attridge, ed. (London: Routledge, ).

. This is the natural state of every system. The boundaries of a system reinforce its self-reliance as well

as its claustrophobia.

. By being deconstruction itself, “deconstruction is justice” (“Force of Law,” supra note at ).

. Richard Beardsworth, Derrida and the Political (London: Routledge, ), – .

. Derrida: Deconstruction from Phenomenology to Ethics, supra note at .

. “Before the Law,” supra note .

. This partly reflects Luhmann’s position on justice from an auto-poietic point of view, as expressed in

Das Recht der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, ), especially chapter V. For Luh-

mann, justice is a formula for contingency, a supra-program that guides all other programs within law.

While justice replaces big ideas such as virtue, principles, etc., it retains the much indispensable internal

bifurcation (contingency). Luhmann, however, does not complete the full circle between law and jus-

tice either, except arguably through second-order observation as a means of changing the law in order

to fine-tune it with justice.

. This is supported by the fact that Derrida includes the element of repeatability in his analysis by refer-

ring to the need for the law to be every time both reinvented and used unaltered by the judge (“Force

of Law,” supra note at ).

. On the concept of mise en abyme (placement into the abyss), or the infinite repetition (for example, the

book cover that has an image of the book cover on it), see Jacques Derrida, Signéponge/Signsponge,trans. Richard Rand (New York: Columbia University Press, ).

. Niklas Luhmann, Ecological Communication, J. Bednarz, Jr., trans. (Cambridge: Polity Press, ); see

also Niklas Luhmann, Art as a Social System, Eva M. Knodt, trans. (Stanford: Stanford University

Press, ).

. “Force of Law,” supra note at .

. Internalization is the crucial diff erence between Derrida’s suspension and the present scheme. For Der-

rida, calculation of the incalculable “does not properly belong either to justice or to law. It only belongs

to either of these domains by exceeding each one in the direction of the other ” (“Force of Law,” supranote

at , emphasis added). Derrida starts from a possibility of externalization, which does not accord

with the present description, where the vocabulary of the self is the only means for the materializationof the other. If not, law would be just and justice would be lawful. But this is only a contingency.

. Blaise Pascal, Pensées, A.J. Krailsheimer, trans. (Harmondsworth, ), .

. Harvie Ferguson, Melancholy and the Critique of Modernity (London: Routledge, ), .

. Works of Love, supra note at .








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. Love as Passion, supra note .

. I can only imagine how the other sees us and that is what I internalize. At the same time the other does

exactly the same, perpetuating expectations of expectations ad in fi nitum, like two black boxes trying to

communicate with each other. See Love as Passion, supra note .. Fubuki remains the absolute other, the radical exteriority of Emmanuel Levinas (Totality and In fi nity ,

Alphonso Lingis, trans. [Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, ]), which, however (and this is

where love becomes self-love), Amélie needs to internalise. According to Levinas, “[t]o love is to exist

as if the lover and the loved one were alone in the world” (“The I and the Totality,” in Entre Nous: On

Thinking of the Other , Michael Smith and Barbara Harshav, trans. [London: Athlone Press, ], ).

. See Drucilla Cornell, “The Relevance of Time to the Relationship between the Philosophy of Limit

and Systems Theory,” /Cardozo Law Review – (), on how Derrida avoids the threat of

colonization.

. Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, Walter Lowrie, trans. (Princeton: Princeton University

Press,

),

.. “N ␣␣␣ ␣ ”: the ultimate mise an abyme that can be found on the gates of

Greek orthodox churches. The phrase, which is an instruction to wash one’s sins both sides, can be read

ambidirectionally.

nothomb estupor y kierkegaard

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